The Ones Who Walk Away from Happy Valley

I’m a science fiction writer, and one of the great stories of science fiction is “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” which was written by Ursula K. LeGuin. The story posits a fantastic utopian city, where everything is beautiful, with one catch: In order for all this comfort and beauty to exist, one child must be kept in filth and misery. Every citizen of Omelas, when they come of age, is told about that one blameless child being put through hell. And they have a choice: Accept that is the price for their perfect lives in Omelas, or walk away from that paradise, into uncertainty and possibly chaos.

At Pennsylvania State University, a grown man found a blameless child being put through hell. Other grown men learned of it. Each of them had to make their choice, and decide, fundamentally, whether the continuation of their utopia — or at very least the illusion of their utopia — was worth the pain and suffering of that one child. Through their actions, and their inactions, we know the choice they made.

If you read nothing else today about this mess, read Scalzi’s entire post. I especially like the lesson he draws from this story for men whose adult sons call them and say, “Dad, I just saw a man sodomizing a child. What should I do?” Scalzi advises, in part: “…at the appropriate time in the future ask your adult son why the f**k he did not try to save that kid.”

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“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a good science fiction story. When I read it, it struck me as a morally inverted version of scapegoat mythology and very creepy. It’s definitely apropos to this situation.

At the root of this tragedy, transcending it by light-years, lies in the might-makes-right patriarchalism underlying human society, alas, so far, though perhaps less so these last fifty years, bitch though the usual old-guard suspects with testosterone poisoning might over the “feminization” of modern society. That complex of beliefs declares that the possession of greater (1.) Upper-body musculature (2.) Age (3.) Wealth (4.) Power (5.) Fame (6.) Role in breadwinning and “putting food on your family” entitles its possessors, by that very possession, to a slack stretched beyond endurance in the way of verbal and emotional and physical abuse, subjection of the choice of romantic partners by “inferior” members to public in-house referendum, overwork, the ascription of lower-class social status to all those working in ways that dirty their nails, ad infinitum. Not only do those so endowed and thence so abusive seldom recognize the surpassing truth of their position – that with power of any kind comes manifold responsibility – but when called on their abuse, they reveal to the discerning the poetic justice of their own inner weakness-in-strength in the form of red-faced how-dare-you accusations of lese-majeste, treason, defensiveness, baroque playing of crybaby victim cards all their own, and, ultimately, a shocked disbelief that really does seem authentic, after the immemorial “But no one’s ever complained before!” defense. That latter claim, of course, arises from never having been read the riot act early and often, from never having had the brick-shitting fear of G-d put into them by emboldened underlings willing to risk a temporary safety (or, on veteran occasion, alas, a life more temporary still) for a later liberty. What’s the solution? I don’t know, Babs, but I do know this: self-education (its own reward, too); the divers I-AM-SPARTACVS moral equivalents in every sphere of unionizing/mutiny; athletic/artistic disciplines of all kinds enlisted toward the overthrow of the local tyrants; anything, in other words, undertaken under the belief that it is nobler to risk one’s own death than to live the rest of his days as another’s bitch.

In which category the role of imaginative literature at its best should never be neglected, one reason why, whatever the ostensibly political or social subject, I have long seen the true aristocrats among our “punditry” lie, not on the opinion pages, but among those whose place, whether as tributary or as main stream, lies within the literature proper of their respective nations (in which number I am happy to induct such philosophers as Spinoza, &c., who have, through their giving of balming Promethean hope to those in darkened subjection, contributed to the historic advance of properly-understood anti-authoritarian liberal values at their noblest). Every one’s Hall of Fame in the literary-liberatory line will differ, but in catching that sacred fire that comes of having seen, via imaginative mimesis, that it can be and has, times without number, been done, first in the mind and then in the world (in the beginning was the word…), one cannot start that fire too early – or fan its flickering embers back to blazing too often.

For the last six months or so, many here in Nebraska have been protesting the pipeline route and doing everything in their power to get the pipeline moved. Ranchers, farmers, and their city-dwelling neighbors in Lincoln and Omaha have come together to condemn the pipeline and attend every public meeting we can (where we were often opposed by out-of-state union workers bussed in by TransCanada in favor of the pipeline) to let our representatives know that we won’t have this pipeline cutting through the Sandhills or running directly above the Ogallala Aquifer. And now it looks like we’ve at least delayed the pipeline and we may well succeed in getting it moved.

Given the devastation one oil company brought to your home state, I thought you’d understand better than most what a great day this is for Nebraska.

“When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.

“As a practical matter a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no opinion is asked or expected of you, and when the utterance of uncalled-for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father’s offering you a place in his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if any of you young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

“I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. ‘In a few years,’ reasons one of them, ‘I shall have gained a standing, and then I will use my powers for good.’ Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought. His ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.”

Le Guin’s choice to walk away is, at some level, one everyone makes. There will always be something more we could have done to ease the suffering of others, especially those at a distance. But the suffering of those we see, close up, and endured through no fault of their own–that is much a different story. Justice must be local.

That said:

I think the true cause of this and related scandals is the breakage of the first commandment: idolatry. The sodomizers and pimps of children shame us merely by being allowed to live, let alone live in our midst. Let them seek mercy at the seat of God; I can give them none. I reserve my Christianity for the victims of their wanton brutality, and I will not forgive their crimes against the innocent to make myself comfortable. But the crimes multiply and continue outward: the students which rioted–RIOTED–over the dismissal of “JoePa” show us this dynamic of idolatry, and self-idolatry, in action. What kind of sick and depraved people would riot to defend a guy who knowingly stood by a child rapist in his employ? They should be whipped in the street and expelled from school, as they would be by any decent society. If they need amusement that bad, we might as well bring back the gladiator pits. But I suspect that shame is a therapy we are unable to dispense anymore, and our “tolerance” is just indifference masking hatred or fear.

The football team at PSU should be disbanded–that would send a clear message to the rioters. Let Pennsylvania see to it.

What I am about to write puts me crossways to the entire modern world. I am not a tough guy. I don’t seek out fights. I haven’t been in a fight since (depending on how you figure ’em) high school or boot camp, and the last of those was 18 years ago.

What kind of man sees a boy being a** raped and doesn’t physically intervene?

Now an argument could be made—I’m not the one to make it—that a fifteen year old in the shower, that could be consensual, it could be a case of statutory and statutory only. But a ten year old boy? With an older man? In the showers? With his hands up against the wall?

HOW CAN YOU NOT STOP THAT?

Never mind what happens when you walk out, when you walk away.

HOW CAN YOU NOT STOP THAT?

I used to play D&D, and later on, other RPGs. I remember a game called Aftermath, by Charette and Hume, where they talked about cannibals and cannibalism in the aftermath of a nuclear war. They said that there were various arguments about eating human flesh, but they had adopted the premise that YOU DON’T DO THAT and referred to cannibals as ghouls.

I am wary of bright line tests, but I’ll throw this one out there for commentary and discussion. If you see a ten year old being raped, and you walk away, you have forfeited your claim to humanity.

Dostoyevsky got to the central question of the city of Omelas well before Ursela Le Guin, in The Brothers Karamazov, with the great question Ivan asked his religious brother Alyosha:

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature…and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on this condition?”

You know all those really cool electronic gadgets that we can enjoy at amazingly low prices?
That’s only possible because millions of Chinese laborers work long hours for a pittance

The problem is the lack of an alternative source. Back in 1995 I briefly tried to boycott goods from China because of their awful human rights record, and I soon discovered how impossible that was because for whole categories of goods even then “Made in Cnina” was the only label. Note that I was not insisting on US made goods either– but there was no made in [insert name of any of the 190 other nations]” either.

Speaking of Fuseli, see my favorite image from William Blake, avowedly after the former. Now you mention it, it would be right at home in virtually every comment thread, Alpha to Omega, by which this blog will be forever in amber – if not always blue jeans, babe.

John E, the analogy doesn’t quite work. While the conditions in Chinese factories sound pretty bad, the workers choose to be there versus the fields of their villages. Which was the same choice made by workers in the US during the industrial revolution.

The part of modern consumer society that would fit is environmental degradation. Here the people effected haven’t been born, so they can’t choose, but we benefit.

“Given the devastation one oil company brought to your home state” actually the government did more to devastate the state by imposing a drilling ban that resulted in thousands of jobs disappearing from the state. just look at how many rigs left the gulf to go elsewhere for work. those jobs are coming back. i suspect many of the rig workers have headed to North Dakota where their skills are appreciated.

When a man can “choose” between taking a job, or subjecting his family to starvation and homelessness, it is not a “free choice.” If every adult human being was assigned a share of basic capital resources, such as land and tools, we could then say “work or starve,” although it would be best to have communal arrangements to set aside resources for the event of droughts and hurricanes.

In any case, it remains true that OUR incredibly cheap gadgets are made possible by the pittance that is the only option offered to Chinese workers who want to leave their fields — and often have to, because ruthless local despots not even responsive to the communist party leadership are evicting them to use their land as collateral for huge development loans.

IF every business paid the FULL cost of its operation, then we would not have to worry about the dichotomy between shutting down drilling that might put thousands of shrimpers out of work, or allowing that drilling so as not to put thousands of oil rig workers out of work. Compensating the shrimpers would be a routine cost of BP’s operations, and reflected in the price of oil. THEN, the markets could rationally allocate where to invest, without dumping the costs of doing business on parties who receive no part of the profits.

Common point: its not freedom, if the individual making the choice does not bear full responsibility for ALL costs, commensurate with the potential benefits.